6 IMPORTANT Things That Make Our Food Garden So Successful

[Music] [Music] and that's just a few examples of what we've grown here on our small acreage get a I'm mark from self-sufficient me and in this video I'm going to give you my six things that makes our food garden so successful let's get into it [Applause] [Music] well as you can probably see she's fairly wet out here we've just had a thunderstorm and it hammered down I can hear a few guys in the background using their chainsaws no doubt a few trees dropped over in the storm and they're now chopping them up speaking about water the first thing that makes our garden so successful is you guessed it water a few weeks ago I released a video whinging about how unusually dry it was here oh poor bugger me there are farmers and towns here in Australia going through the worst drought in a generation I just spent last weekend in my old hometown of Toowoomba and unfortunately it's terribly dry there as well my sister and brother-in-law owned a little acreage just outside of Tomba and I've featured their property or their veggie garden on my channel before they're now having to truck in water just to survive of course their veggie garden now is put on hold until they start to get some steady rainfall and their tanks get naturally filled up I really do hope it rains soon for all those currently in drought but what a difference four weeks makes since our dry start to spring we've had around a hundred and fifty mils of rain and everything's greening up again our rainfall averages 1,400 millimetres per year and that's my point it helps dramatically if you live in an area that receives regular rainfall because to have a food garden like we do requires a significant amount of water and the cockatoos need to drink as well most fruit and vegetables are thirsty crops by nature because they need a lot of water in order to produce the tasty crisp plump food we demand but even if you do get regular rainfall it's often not regular enough or it doesn't rain at the right time to effectively grow good crops and that's where water storage comes into play storing rainwater in a tank / damn is important for two main reasons the flexibility of watering when you need to and it's cheaper than using town water and in some cases rain water might even be better quality than treated town water for plants here on our property we have the best of all worlds we have regular rainfall storage we have a bore so we can access underground water this was a big selling point for when we first purchased the property or decided to purchase the property and to top it off we have town water which we don't use on the garden at all we also have an envirotank here and a movable hose that's about 50 meters long and I've punched some holes all the way through it about 15 20 centimeters apart and that acts as a sprinkling system so all our waste water from our home ends up watering our fruit trees I wouldn't advise using waste water in the vegetable garden but around fruit trees is totally fine and an excellent way to recycle water this here's a small thousand litre tank it harvests a little bit of rainfall from our roof doesn't store much but it still comes in handy now if you have a small garden in the city for example it could still be economical to use town water especially if you compensate with shorter showers but if you can I do recommend getting a tank even if it's a small one to harvest and store rainwater to use when needed well the sun is shining now so there's no better time to explain the second thing that makes our garden so successful and that's climate we live in a subtropical climate that's why we can grow oranges and whilst we do get stinking hot summers we can still grow plenty of crops all year round unlike other climates which might be much colder or hotter limiting growing to certain times of the year we do still have different growing seasons depending on the type of crop and we can get the odd weather event but we don't tend to get the extremes that can limit food production how you doing no matter what climate you live in I can't emphasize enough about the importance of timing your crops to fit within their best temperature growing range because if you don't the plants won't just grow or produce poorly but pests will target those crops growing outside of their growing range for example most places grow tomatoes through spring and summer however here we grow them through winter into spring because once summer hits it gets way too hot for the Tom's likewise we grow corn through summer because our winters although mild are still too cold for corn to grow well so either study or learn from experience the best growing times for your favorite food crops for your climate and you'll have more success and you'll also have more success if you pay close attention to your soil including fertilizer which is our third thing on a group fertilizer in with soil because it should be treated as part of the soil and not as an additive we sprinkle over it our soil is alive and all the living beings in this soil help to keep it healthy it's true you will grow plants in dead soil even washed sand if you keep adding nutrients such as soluble commercial fertilizers but essentially you will have a quasi hydroponic system that requires more additives effort and money than it should on the other hand a healthy live soil is an ecosystem that forms a symbiotic relationship between animals fungi and plants attending to each other's needs by creating holding helping to absorb and making best use of nutrients therefore it's no secret that the best-tasting produce is grown in healthy soil and the way you keep soil healthy is by feeding it unlike commercial fertilizers raw man you was like chicken poop cow or horse don't just give your plants nutrients they also feed worms microbes insects grubs fungi and many others combined with good compost mulch and even buried scraps feeding your soil with unrefined animal manures and structure helps retain moisture and can potentially make growing beds that remain fertile and productive for years sure it's okay to add some organic commercial fertilizer as a boost for crops at planting or during growth but it shouldn't be used to replenish garden beds say at the end or start of a season use real poo instead to liven up your soil and reap bigger and healthier crops the fourth thing that makes our garden so successful is location now this is a tricky one to explain because I don't want to put people who live in smaller properties or in the sea off by what I'm about to say which is we have the space to grow I can dedicate one full garden bed or sometimes two to the one crop and grow a ton if I want to on our three acres we have plenty of room for lots of different fruit trees and in some case several of the same types of fruit trees and slightly different varieties to extend harvests and grow more produce however if you do live in a location that's space challenged like I've said and demonstrated before in other videos you can still grow a lot of food by planing well and crowding your crops in as long as you have Sun and they are not shaded out by big city sky Rises etc I've just got out of the Sun but Sun is an extremely important element for growing food it's where plants get most of their energy from our property gets a lot of Sun and we've located our vegetable garden and fruit trees appropriately to maximize sun exposure for those plants that require it which is most food crops check out the scrub turkey getting into our chicken manure notice how our vegetable garden is separate to our fruit trees well most of the fruit trees anyway we might have the odd banana or other fruit tree scattered it amongst the vegetable garden but it's not much and it's on the outskirts a mulberry tree here or there well the simple reason for it is because it limits unnecessary shading out of the smaller plants by the big ones yes I'm totally aware of the back to Eden and food forest gardening we're under crops are inter grown with larger fruit trees and whilst I admire it I get the concept and I don't begrudge others who do this type of growing I'm personally not a big fan for three main reasons the shading out the practicality of growing in ground I'm a keen raised bed garden and myself maneuvering around the existing trees and the potential feeder root disruption of fruit trees as the soil is disturbed plus you lose more produce to animals because they use the fruit trees as cover whereby if you use a raised garden bed you can manage that much easier having said that we've developed our orchard like a food forest by cramming in more fruit trees than usual and I've started another mini food forest in our front yard replacing ornamentals and I've talked about that before and that area focuses on native bush tucker with smaller shrubs to fill space under larger trees I just might be growing vegetables underneath them number 5 is time we spend a lot of time in our garden watering weeding planting pruning harvesting all that type of management the more time you spend on something usually the better the results are and that's one reason why I like to spend at least an hour or two a day on average in our garden don't get me wrong you can still have good food gardening success if your time poor several of these raised garden beds won't take much time at all to look after perhaps an hour a week or so once they're set up and you can still be growing quite a lot of food in them but you obviously won't grow as much as someone who can dedicate more time to their garden it's that extra time we dedicate to our garden that helps make it so successful and you won't want to spend the time in the garden if you don't have the passion for it passion being our sixth and last thing that makes our garden successful check out these cucumbers they are growing excellent in this manure mix that I've just put on top it's really just a top helping of manure and I've got a squash there and a mini round zucchini on this side and they should grow nicely just into the start of summer and probably start perishing but we're going to get some good fruit out of them and that excites me to see them stay in the flower already this is not just a hobby for us although it is a good hobby our garden and belief in self-sufficiency is more of our lifestyle and ethos that was born at a necessity not an evolution from something that we decided to do for fun we started growing food to save money and change to a less stressful and healthier way of living add on the current instability in the world today and we're as motivated as ever to grow as much food as possible not that I think the world is going to end in 10 years because it's not but with prices of food increasing due to greedy energy corporations and elite investors artificially inflating electricity prices supermarkets crushing competition stagnant wages fragile financial markets droughts and never-ending Wars I think the best investment for the future is a food garden you can burn money but you can't eat it I hope you enjoyed this video if you did make sure you give me a big successful thumbs up and also subscribe to the channel if you haven't already don't forget to share this video around with your friends because that helps my channel heaps thanks a lot for watching bye for now now where's that Turkey he's around here somewhere they follow me all day giving me the heebie jeebies is usually a million miles away from me and scared but you're starting to hang around like the flies catches

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 700,131

Keywords: how to grow a successful food garden, how to grow a successful garden, vegetable garden, food garden, fruit and vegetable garden, fruit and vegetable growing tips, vegetable garden tips

Id: BP3qUWQu-wI

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/PlantyHamchuk]

Thought this was a good intro video for anyone dreaming or considering this kind of life.

[u/shaevan]

Mark is great, a light hearted enthusiast doing things well

[u/kazkh]

Wow this guy knows what he’s talking about!

Living in a dry part of Australia, water’s a major issue and you simply won’t be able to grow what you need without access to cheap water somehow. This guy’s got a great system going.